Archive for May 31st, 2006

There is a religious group which teaches that the Solemn League and Covenant for Reformation and Defence of Religion, the Honour and Happiness of the King, and the Peace and Safety of the Three Kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland taken and subscribed several times by King Charles II, and by all ranks in the said three kingdoms with an act of the General Assembly 1643 and an Act of Parliament 1644, is binding on Christians in North America today. This group, the Reformed Presbytery of North America (General Meeting) regards only itself to be a faithful church, because its elders claim to be *keeping* the Solemn League and Covenant.

We are not opposed to swearing a public, social covenant to more strictly bind ourselves to necessary duties. For example, we would gladly promise to promote the true reformed religion in the U.S. Please note however that this would not be the Solemn League and Covenant of the Three Kingdoms, but would be a different specific oath taken in the plain and common sense of the words.

What we are opposed to is the *fictionalizing* of the Solemn League and Covenant, by reducing it to general moral principles, and by ignoring or minimizing the specifics that make that covenant what it is – the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY, and HOW – of the Solemn League and Covenant.

We are opposed to the teaching that this gutted covenant is THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT. We are opposed to the claim that RPNA (General Meeting) *keep* the Solemn League and Covenant. They claim there are supposed *super-added obligations*, while they discard, when they deem necessary, the clear obligations which the swearers of that covenant laid upon themselves. These specific promises are dismissed easily, and are called *circumstantial*.

We are opposed to a false view of elder and church faithfulness, built upon a carefully constructed legal fiction. Those who *own* the deconstruction of the Solemn League and Covenant are deemed faithful by the elders. Those who contend with this false system, no matter how godly in life or wholesome in doctrine, are abhorred and cursed by the elders.